Melvin – Page 13

Is a Uniform Domain Name a Requirement in Blogging?

by Melvin · Aug 31, 2011

As newbies in blogging we are constantly taught that its a good practice to match the domain name of our blog to the market that we are into. So for instance if I’m blogging about tulips flowers, my domain name should be something like ‘pinktulipflowers.com’ or ‘tulipsflowersguide.com’. I can’t choose a domain name like ‘girlsoverflowers.com’ or ilovenmsname.com’. Yeah, I know the sample url’s are kinda creepy. =p

But does it really mean we need a uniform domain name or something that’s related to our niche? I myself is not a pretty good example as far as this is concern. This blog for instance is an internet marketing/blogging blog. But the domain name is too personal as it has my name on the domain name. Lots of my friends even think that melvinblog.com is nothing but a personal blog and people don’t initially realize that this blog is not really a personal blog.

Another concern is the branding. A blog like ‘internetmarketingsecrets.com’ can more likely be recognized as a marketing blog rather than a blog like [myfullname.com]. Of course this could also play a psychological role to your potential visitors. Imagine, a first time visitor comes in to your site because he was directed their by Google. And then he saw that the domain name is somehow very far from the topic he’s looking into. What do you think would be his reaction/response?

The last factor is the search engine rankings. This isn’t so much of an issue when you’re blogging in a general niche like ‘making money online’ or ‘buying cars’ or ‘insurance’. However it could play a crucial factor when you’re into microniches. Example is when you’re targeting your audience locally. A site like seomalaysia.com has a better chance of ranking better than a site called raneshabdulrahman.com when it comes to providing search optimization services to Malaysia. Or maybe a very small yet targeted niche like ‘beta fish’ in which most audience if not all come from search engines. That would then become a much bigger factor.

Defying the Odds

What I mentioned above are mostly the general rules that most people will really give you especially when you’re just starting out. And to be honest that should really be it. It doesn’t seem to make that much sense to have an unrelated domain name to the niche that you’re blogging to right?

But still we have lots of sites to reference to as far as not following that rule when it comes to naming domain names. Good examples in this niches are johnchow.com, shoemoney.com, entrepreneurs-journey.com, davidrisley.com. All of which have horrible (unrelated) domain names to begin with but they’re definitely the top guns when it comes to making money internet marketing kind of niche.And then we have crazier domains like icanhazcheezburger and a whole lot more raking in tremendous amount of search traffic without following the so called ‘standards’ with on-page optimization.

So I’ll leave it up to you. Honestly, I know people are obsessed with blogging and naming their blogs after them (or their nickname) so that might be the reason why. But considering a uniform domain name is still should be an option and besides, there’s really no harm in trying to be ‘uniformed’. What say you?

Officially Back in the Blogging Business. ;-)

by Melvin · Aug 23, 2011

Yohoo! Looks like I’m back for real! lol.

Shortly after the May 21 fake doomsday blog entry that I made, I gave a hint that I should be giving more effort in my blogging career or whatever it is you may want to call it. In fact a month before that, I wrote a post where I said that I was going to revive this blog.

If you’re a loyal reader of this blog, you’ll spot that the reason for my lack of activity (only 16 posts in the last 6 months) in blogging is work. Since June last year, I got employed and late last year I started taking consulting clients (regarding SEO and online business). That has pretty much made me indisposed up until early May.

But Where Have I Been?

If I got free since early May, why haven’t I been posting so much? The honest answer is:

“I got tired of blogging”.

Fact of the matter is when I started getting lots of free time, I replaced that with a).playing b). hanging out with friends and c).spending more time w/ family. I did so many things that teenagers usually normally do and it’s fun. Obviously it had some effects on the stats and profitability but who cares? I wanna enjoy life eh! Also aside from that I still have my normal day job w/c at times is labor-intensive.

Anyway I couldn’t believe I would say these thing considering that I have been blogging since my early college days and have been workaholic since then. But I guess I got hit with the infamous line ‘you might be missing a lot of things that you should be enjoying at your age’.

Plans

Strange enough, I should’ve posted this type of post a long ago. The reason and logic behind opting not to post this earlier is that I want to write content first on a continuous basis before claiming that I’m back with blogging. Prior to this entry, you can look at my archives and see that I’m back with my normal posting frequency. I don’t want to do the annoying mistake of writing a comeback post and then not post again until a month after which is pretty much what I’ve done in the past few months.

As far as plans, I don’t really have new plans yet aside from just regaining back my momentum in blogging. I would also like to recoup the lost traffic (lots) that I got for not posting and being active that much. From there, I’ll just see where it goes.

I’m also planning out on releasing some free materials that I’ll give out to my newsletter subscribers. Like with the blog, I haven’t been sending that much to my list that they might have gotten cold already. So its also a top priority for me to get my newsletter going as well.

Those are the things new to me, how about you?

Creative Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

by Melvin · Aug 17, 2011

As a blogger, its one of our goals to try to reduce our blog’s bounce rate. Of course, we all want to have people read our stuff and if possible stay on our site for a longer period of time. And do take note that its not just about staying on our blog doing nothing, its about them staying on our site but reading various content from us.

In this blog entry, I’ll discuss different ways on how we as a blogger can reduce our blog’s bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

According to Google themselves, bounce rate is simply just the percentage of single or one-page visits on your site. This is also when a visitor exits on the same page as they entered. So as an example, if you visited this post and then left my blog through this post, you will be considered as a user who ‘bounced’ from my blog.

A very high bounce rate is indicative of various things like a).incorrect sets of audience for your site, b).poor content on your end and etc. So generally if you’re having a very high bounce rate, then you must be concerned that you’re falling into one of those two things I mentioned.

And you can read the following tips below on how you can reduce bounce rate on your site.

Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate

1. Have a landing page

I have been preaching on this method ever since and it seems that lots of bloggers don’t really understand the value of it. I’ve written a post on how using a landing page can increase your traffic but more importantly by using one, you are allowing yourself to attract the right people for your blog.

Think about it, a visitor is more likely to stay and navigate if he is directed to a specific landing page rather than straight to the homepage. Why would we want them to read our stuff more? We want to prove that we’re worth reading of course and that we know what we’re talking about.

2. Eliminate annoying elements

If you think about it, most people who navigate away from your site do it very quickly. Most of time its as quick as less than 10 seconds. There are various reasons for this but by analyzing it yourself, its more likely because they are annoyed on your site as a whole.

Most people don’t like ads, or they don’t like those lightbox popups. Some of them don’t like the sliders and all the fancy stuff. Obviously its hard to please everyone but you should at least try to please the majority. Easiest solution for this is to try minimizing your blog elements.

3. Write good content

Visitors don’t just land on your homepage or designated landing page. Most of the times they land on the specific blog post or article. With this, its very important to write good content to be able to persuade first time visitors to stay more and read more. You can do a simple test and compare your crappy posts from your best posts. You can easily spot the difference in bounce rate and see that your visitors stay with good content. Pretty fundamental tip!

4. Improve Loading Times

I am guilty of this myself. I used to sport themes before that load horribly slow due to lots of javascript stuff. As a result, lots of my readers probably just went away.

Make sure to work on always improving loading speed of your site. Check with Google Webmaster Central Site Performance Tool to see if your site is loading quick enough to satisfy the majority.

5. Minimize External Links

As bloggers, we’re naturally aren’t too shabby to hand out links to other bloggers. Its definitely not bad to give link loves but it sometimes has its own disadvantages and one of those is people going away from your own content. Another is diluting your pagerank although if you know me, I don’t really care that much about search benefits.

So just try to limit linking externally to other sites as it may be one of the reasons why your bounce rate is high.

Conclusion

Just like anything else, bounce rate is just a metric. I am always a proponent of studying your numbers and tweaking based on what it reflects. But still, you must never ever dwell too much on it. Don’t look at your bounce rate stats every 6 hours or so as it can obviously hamper your focus and productivity.

Personally, I do analyze my bounce rate a lot and do the necessary things that I think can help me out more in the long run. How about you? What’s your bounce rate and what’s your best tip to reduce it?

Online Freelancing

by Melvin · Aug 9, 2011

There is no doubt that online freelancing has boomed in the last 2 years or so. But what does “Online Freelancing” really mean? What are the advantages and disadvantages? There are so many questions one might think of when the topic of online freelancing comes to mind. Hopefully, this article will help you answer some of those.

Online freelancing is basically what technology has to offer when it comes to making a living. 21st Century technology as we all know it lives and breathes convenience. Fast and easy money as they say. It is mainly, in simple terms, looking, accepting and finishing a job over the internet without even having to leave the comfort of your own home.

The vast amount of freelance jobs offered online attracts quite an enormous number of jobseekers/freelancers as well. Unlike before, when online freelancing would refer to the majority of the novelists, writers or journalists, today a huge variety of online freelance jobs are offered. One can choose from article writing, web designing, data encoding, photography, scientific research to being an online administrative assistant. There are hundreds of jobs offered in almost every field. Remember that even though you don’t literally fall in line for a job interview, there is still competition and you should be skilled enough to stand out among the rest of the world seeking the same work as you.

Being an online freelancer you must have good management skills, which is necessary to meet your client’s deadlines. Remember that being an online freelancer is somewhat being your own boss and running your own business. Discipline and your ability to put in a good workflow system would be important.

Now, lets talk about the different benefits one can acquire from being a good freelance web designer. The major win of online freelancing is that your work hours are set by non other than yourself. You don’t have to dress up and worry about how the traffic will affect your commute to the office. All you need is your time, skills and an internet capable computer and you are all set to earn some cash. The flexibility that online freelancing offers is priceless compared to the strictness you experience of having to report to work day after another. And the financial potential is also in your control. The more jobs you accept and deliver on time the more cash you chip in.

As with anything in this world, there are drawbacks in online freelancing. The principal is that you have to take care of all of your money management. You have to constantly work on project after project if you want stay financially afloat. When you start out as a freelancer, you will probably have start on jobs that are not financially satisfying. These jobs will probably last for awhile, until you have collected a list of satisfied clients and you are skilled and confident enough to accept better paying projects.

PHP Dir Submit Review – A Directory Submitter Software

by Melvin · Aug 7, 2011

Back in the early days, directory submission is one of the most powerful ways to both drive traffic to a blog and to rank in search engines. The algorithm of Google back then makes it very easy for sites listed in directories to be crawled and to be considered an authority site. With that people rushed quickly into this and tried submitting their sites to as much directories as possible.

Nowadays it isn’t as effective as it used to because Google has tweaked their algorithm. But make no mistake of it, it can still benefit you if you do it properly. With that I would like to introduce you this software called PHP Dir Submit.

What is PHP Dir Submit?

PHP Dir Submit is simply just a web application that allows you to ‘semi-automatically’ do directory submission service. As its name suggests, its a PHP script and with that being said its compatible literally to all web server setup. This directory submitter software can be used depending on how you want it to be utilized.

If you own lots of mini niche sites that make some good money then you can use this script to submit your site to 300+ directories so it can start picking up in the search engines. Again this is done automatically with a press of a button. You no longer need to go into these different sites and type the same information again and again.In short, it will save you a bunch of time.

Another good use of it is submitting sites for your clients. It has an automatic Paypal integration so you can easily build a business around submitting sites for them. If done correctly, we all know this model of business makes a lot of money although it would really really take a lot of work for you to be able to reap that benefit if you’re about to go to this path.

PHP Dir Features

Now do take note that aside from the 300 web directories, they also have a list of 300 article directories and another 300 social bookmarking sites. Of course, you have the ability to add more sites to the list and PHP Dir Submit makes it very handy for you to do so through their admin console.

According to their site, these are the features for the site owner:

Easy to use administration control panel
Preloaded with hundreds of directory sites
Add unlimited number of directories and bookmarking sites
Support these platforms: PHP Link Directory (PHPLD), ArticleMS, Pligg, Scuttle, Scuttle Plus, PHPDug
Send email newsletter to all users (or individual user)
Fully search engine optimized
Paypal integration
Free lifetime directory updates

Again this is a PHP Script so it should be easy to install on your end. In case the ease is still not enough, there’s a fully fledged FAQ page on the site that walks you through the most commonly asked questions.

Pricing

Pricing starts at $49 for a single site license and $99 for a multi-site license. My advice is to try out the single site license first and if you’re happy with the script and you think its a pretty good model, then you can grab the multi-site license if you’re planning to create multiple ones.

As far as the disparity with the features, here’s a screenshot:

All in all, it seems to be a pretty decent software. I was able to navigate through the demo panel and on a hindsight, I could say it should capture your interest if you’re looking into this type of model.

The question on whether the product is worth it or not is kinda related to the question “is a directory submission business still effective these days?”. Of course using that as a business is just one of the options for this software since you can again, use it on your own web properties as well.

But it’s all up to you. I highly suggest you to check out PHP Dir Submit and the reason being is because they allow you to navigate through their admin demo console and the normal demo for users. With this, you can instantly navigate around and see if what it offers is worth your time. Or if you’ve had your experience with it, let us know through the comment form.

Five Things Bloggers Should Do That They Probably Don’t

by Melvin · Aug 3, 2011

This is a guest post entry by Jessica Wagner

Blogging is supposed to be fun. But in order to get good at it, you have to take it seriously. It’s not just a matter of establishing a destination on the Internet where you can spill your guts for whoever comes across it. If you truly want people to read what you have to say, then you should probably try to accomplish the following:

1. Keep up with current events

Nothing is sure to keep you more depressed these days, but then again, nothing is going to keep your writing relevant than maintaining at minimum a general understanding of world events. You might not find phone hacking and government debt debate interesting and certainly not something you want to spend your limited free time writing about, but being able to tie in the pulse of current activity with whatever you write about adds an extraordinary amount of professionalism to the look of your blog.

2. Utilize social networks

Sure, every aspiring blogger has a Facebook page and somewhere on it a mention or link to their blog. But that’s hardly utilizing social networks effectively. Convince several of your friends to be relays for these links, and find a way to bring Facebook to your blog via a “like” box or other application installation. Use social networks to spread your word. That’s what they’re there for.

3. Get a business valuation

Even if you don’t make squat from your blog, you aren’t aware of how much you could be making. An increasing number of business appraisals experts are extending their valuation expertise into the digital world. This means many appraisers can examine a blog or other website and determine whether or not there’s a potential for monetiaation. For anyone serious about earning extra income through their blog, this should be a serious consideration.

4. Yoga

Yoga enthusiasts claim the practice can help relieve the stresses of just about any situation with the exception of perhaps straining muscles through yoga. At any rate, any activity that centers on focus and physical as well as mental relaxation has to be healthy for those who love to write. Good writing needs a clear head and a clean bill of health, and taking the time to achieve both will do a lot of good for the quality of your blog.

5. Write everyday

The Internet is jam packed with blogs. Most of them consist of several entries over the course of a week or two, then reduced numbers of entries for about a month afterward. Several weeks go by, another post appears apologizing for a lack of activity, and that’s about where they end. Your first mission is to prevent this from happening to your blog. How? You make it your objective to post content on your site every single day. You should post multiple times a day if it’s possible. You need to build up content, but more importantly you need to make blog-writing as necessary a daily habit as exercise or brushing your teeth. Only then, will you have the blog existence it takes to capture peoples’ attention.

Melvin’s sidenote: Of course I don’t agree with the guest blogger’s take mainly because I don’t and can’t post everyday. But I hope you see the point that writing content for the long term is nothing but hardwork and dedication.

Don’t ever forget that writing a blog needs to be an enjoyable experience. But at the same time, don’t underestimate the seriousness of your task. If your writing is truly meant for the eyes of an audience, then you have to take steps to ensure you’re getting readership, that readership is increasing, and that you’re constantly supplying readers with more. You want people to keep coming back. The only way you do that is by giving them reason to keep returning for more.

The “Other” Things that You Can Enjoy in Blogging

by Melvin · Jul 31, 2011

So before I start everything else in this post, I just want to (proudly) let everyone know that I make money from most of my blogs and its one of the reasons why I really love blogging.

I said financial benefits is one of the reasons, the other half is the happiness and the satisfaction that it brings to me. It’s always been my mistake to write blogging and internet marketing tips to bloggers as if everyone is aiming at making money and being famous. It amazes me (and I’m thankful) when someone goes out in comments and says “not all people have making money on their minds and I’m one of them”. That gives me a very good realization that blogging for money like we do is just less than 10% of the whole blogging community.

I figured out that most people blog because they’re happy with it and it fulfills them greatly. That’s something that I’ve realized late last year and in this blog post, I’m going to tackle how you, as a make money online blogger can still be happy with blogging even though you’re not making that much money or not meeting your expectations financially.

1. The “intrinsic love” for blogging

When I started my blog MelvinBlog.com (see I’m not linking to it), I was very sure that I can do this forever AS LONG as I could make money with it. Its tricky but when I had hard times late 2009 and the blog wasn’t making that much money, I thought I would lose my interest in it but I was wrong.

The reason for that is the intrinsic love that I have for blogging for the topic. I do internet marketing since late 2007 and every time I talk about it in my blog, I really, really feel that great satisfaction for doing so. And that should be the case for most of us. People who have been blogging forever that aren’t getting compensated are the ones who have that “real love” for what they do and as a result, they don’t bother with the money that they make. That’s how I equally feel, how most of my blogging peers feel and hopefully that should be how you look at it as well.

2. The community

This second factor does not come immediately and it may take a while for you before you realize it.

The community is what makes a blog alive and without it, a blog is nothing but a plain static web entity. It just so happened that our blog community is one of the reasons why most of us stay and feel fulfilled. Imagine having tens of people, if not hundreds, commenting on our posts. Imagine thousands of people daily visiting our blogs even though its written by a simple person like us. Isn’t it self-fulfilling?

That does not even stop there. I know most of you here have received personal emails from your own audiences on how they’re so thankful for one of the things that your blog have done for them. It sounds corny, but that’s sweet right?

3. Friendships and relationships

While its very rare to see an occasion where two bloggers end up being into a romantic relationship (lol), forming friendships through blogging is a very frequent case. How many of you here have actually treated a blogger as a good friend of yours without even seeing or talking to that blogger in person? Yes, I know the feeling.

It doesn’t end with friendships. Most of the times, it leads to fruitful partnerships and joint ventures that can later on pay off for both of you.

You see, I could take 20 friends any time over 20 rotating 125X125 sidebar banners on my site. 😉

4. The Experience (with a big E)

Consider the following: I wrote a blog entry and got over a hundred comments. I got in front page of Digg, I got a thousand pageviews just this day for this post.

I can’t stress enough for myself how blogging has given me so much unforgettable experience in life. I was told that people don’t crave for things, they crave for experience and I can say that’s 100% true based on my experience.

All the things I mentioned above, the love for blogging, the community and the relationships. It all leads to a superb real-life experience on something. And I’m not just talking about good experiences that make us happy, I’m also talking about experiences that are a bit negative. No one actually forgets them and its equally memorable for us just as with the good ones.

5. The rewards (outside the money)

Every time I look back on what blogging has brought to me except the money, I usually end up smiling because it has brought me a lot more than I expected.

One of the best rewards that you can get from blogging is the increased expertise and brand that you get. “Who would think that by talking about this topic people would see me as an expert in this niche?” Is it not nice for us to realize that?

Another unsung reward is your personal learnings from it. I mentioned above that I learned blogging isn’t just about making money and we are just a minority of the blogosphere. That’s just one of the myriads of things that I’ve learned from blogging. I consider these learnings as a reward since I don’t really need to study something (formally) to gain those things.

I got tired of putting a heading called conclusion because not all blog entries have conclusions like this one right? I’ll let you put your own conclusion on this post. What do you think about blogging minus the “making money” part? Do you think its still as fulfilling?

Image credits to Smemon